The Finance Business Partner - Asia Pacific - July 2019
The essential skills and mindset to move your team fro Calculators to Coaches
Do you want to take your finance team to the next level?
Tailored in-house finance business partner training & development programmes
Are you ready for the finance revolution?
The future of finance is robots, a small number of exception fixers, and commercially-focussed influencers.
Finance is changing fast
Over the next 5 -15 years automation will change finance, freeing up time for us to be better business partners and leaders.
Month end no longer exists as we know it, as transactions are live time. Forecasts are automated, continuous, rolling, as far out as you want. And with a rolling forecast the annual budget process is largely eliminated.
The future of finance is robots, a small number of exception ‘fixers’, and a small number of dedicated commercially-focussed people with financial expertise.
These pure business partners will be in demand and highly paid. Some will be very, very highly paid.
We call then Super Business Partners.
Prepare your team for the finance revolution by moving from Compliance to Commercial and developing the 6 principles of finance business partnering.
The future of finance is automation and a small number of relationship-building influencers.
What is finance business partnering?
Building relationships, turning data into insights, and bringing numbers to life
FBP is about 3 things:
1 Building relationships
Influence starts with relationships. You can’t influence anyone if they don’t trust you. Accountants focus on systems, data & processes. Partners invest time in relationships.
2 Turning data into insights
Accountants deal in the data that tells us what has happened. Commercially-focussed finance partners focus on insight, by asking & answering the question so what?
3 Bringing numbers to life
Probably the worst way to communicate numbers is to use a table of numbers. Business partners bring their data to life by telling the story behind the numbers, and communicating simple, clear messages.
If you do those 3 things you'll influence decisions.
And that's the point of being a finance business partner - to influence commercial and operational decisons.
The myths of FBP
Conventional wisdom is to challenge the business, and make recommendations.
The myths of FBP
Here are the 3 biggest finance business partner myths that hold back our relationships and influence:
1 Be a critical friend
The easiest way to create resistance and damage your relationship is to criticise someone. Your chances of influencing them have just crashed.
2. Challenge the business
The best way to make a sales, marketing, or operations person defensive is to challenge their ideas. Instead we want to coach & sell the benefits of doing things differently.
3 Make recommendations
Recommendations also create resistance - especially recommendations from finance to non-finance. Better to explore options and scenarios.
We have all been senior finance leaders, where we subscribed to the conventional wisdom.
Then we moved outside of finance, had finance partnering us, and realised that this advice and thinking is not helpful.
Are your team dealing in data or insight?
Data answers the question what. Information answers the question why. And insight answers the question so what.
How far up insight mountain are your team?
Data answers the question what?
Information answers the question why?
And insight answers the questions: so what, what next, how could we improve?
Finance are great at telling people what happened and surface whys.
And poor at giving people commercial drivers and helping to answer the so what.
And that's the fundamental difference between an accountant who tells people that sales are 4% below budget due to customer X.
And a finance business partner who say, hey: here are 3 things we could think about to grow sales and margin.
We work with finance teams to move them from data to genuine commercial insight that influences decisions.
Why listen to us?
We've been senior finance leaders, but our methodology comes directly from our experience in sales and marketing.
Andrew Jepson
Managing Partner, Asia Pacific
Hi, I’m Andrew Jepson. I’m a CA based out of Sydney, running the Asia Pacific region. I’ve held senior commercial finance roles, and also experienced life outside of finance as a general manager.
I wrote the book 'Compliance to Commercial: The QUIET Approach To Finance Business Partnering', and I run Australia's longest running public business partner workshops.
Having worked both in and out of finance, I can bring both perspectives to the table.
Andrew Jepson, CA, Partner, Asia Pacific
Andy Shambrook
Founder & Managing Partner
Hi, I’m Andy Shambrook, founder and managing partnering based out of the UK.
I used to be a finance director and thought I had cracked the finance business partner code. Then I became a sales director and saw a whole new perspective.
I founded The Finance Business Partner in 2014 and have travelled the World showing people everything I learned in sales that I wish I had known when I worked in finance.
Andy Shambrook FCA, Founder and Managing Partner
Some of our clients
Over the last 5 years we've worked with over 5,000 finance business partners across over 100 companies all over the World.
You are more than welcome to contact any of our clients to get a first hand view of how we helped them.
Training & development options
Choose from online video courses, public workshops or tailored in-house development programmes
After our programmes your people will be able to:
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build relationships, quickly
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translate data into insight
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influence without challenging
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deal with difficult people
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sell their ideas
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negotiate for win-win outcomes
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bring their numbers to life
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communicate clear messages
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tell the story behind the numbers
Whether you choose our public workshops or in-house development programmes, we'll help move your team from Compliance to Commercial.
Investment options
Choose from our great value options to help your team move from Compliance to Commercial:
3 hour conference workshop covering the 6 principles of business partnering - $2,450
3 hour conference plus 2 tickets to our 2 day Compliance to Commercial public workshop, including Insights Discovery session - $3,850
3 hour conference plus 4 tickets to our 2 day Compliance to Commercial public workshop, including Insights Discovery session - $5,450
Stand-alone Insights Discovery half-day sessions are also available.
In-house development programmes
For teams of 8 or more we can offer our premium in-house development programme, including:
Pre & post assessments
We start with a online survey benchmarking your team against our database of 2,000+ people. We repeat the survey at the end to measure ROI.
Video lessons
Core content is delivered by 10 hours of on-demand video lessons, including case-studies, templates to download, exercises and tasking. Cost effective, especially for global teams, it also leaves face-to-face workshops for application.
Face-to-face workshops
High-impact interactive group exercises, business simulations, and real-life tasks to create deep mindset and behavioural change. Choose the number of days to match your budget and level of change required.
Insights Discovery
Insights Discovery helps your people understand their personal communication style and importantly how they can adapt it to get the best from other people.
